Three year logburner record

In these posts I’ve argued for some time that the Solar PV is a “nice to have” but is not really part of the performance of the house – that is due to the air tightness and insulation. So whether one has solar PV or not affects the energy bills, but not how the house behaves.

When the visitors come on the International Passive House Open Days – see https://passivehouse-international.org/index.php?page_id=262 – it will be interesting to hear what they say about Solar PV. See the slightly earlier post – we are ID5042 and seem to be the only Passive House in Essex (indeed, most of East Anglia) which is open this year.

Anyway, the Feed-in-Tariff isn’t anything like as attractive as it used to be, even though the cost of the panels has fallen considerably, so the sort of payback that we’ve been getting is no longer obtainable.

On the other hand the Solar Thermal panels and the Logburner, both working with (into?) the Thermal Store are key to the thermal management of the house – not forgetting the big, south-facing windows.

So it may be of interest to publish the graphs for the last 3 years showing the number of times we had to light the logburner and how many barrows of wood we used. I regret that we didn’t make a notes for the first winter we were here but it would not have been representative anyway as it was the end of October (just over 4 years ago now) when we finally moved in – into a cold, damp house. I remember that we burnt quite a lot of wood at the beginning getting the house up to temperature and to begin to dry it out.

So here are the three graphs

I’m sorry that they are not clearer – this seems to be the best I can manage within my limited understanding of WordPress.

In table form

Year

Fires

Barrows

2013-14

96

35

2014-15

89

33

2015-16

103

39

And I note, with mild interest, that in every year we had to light the log burner in Week 42. And we’ve just done so again this year. Wasn’t 42 the answer to life, the universe and everything?